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My Comments

TDK was once known in its earlier years for storage media, especially tapes and, subsequently floppy and optical discs. During that time, when any of us wanted high-quality audio or video recording, we chose this name as one of our preferred brands. Infact one idea they were known for in the 1970s was a cost-effective high-bias magnetic tape formula known as “Super Avilyn” which yielded as good an audio or video recording result as traditional chrome-based high-bias magnetic tape.

Now that we have moved to MP3 players, smartphones and hard-disk-based storage of audio and video content, this company had diversified in to cheaper audio equipment to the open market and reduced its presence in storage media for that market. Here, Hitachi and others have been improving on the data capacity of hard disks over the many years with TDK disappearing in to the background in this field.

But they have not left this storage-medium expertise of theirs behind in this hard-disk-based data-storage era. Here, they raised the data-density bar for hard disks further, thus allowing for 1.5 terabyte per square inch. The article raised possibilities of 15” laptops coming with single 2.5” hard disks greater than 1Tb or desktop computers being equipped with 3.5” hard disks greater than 2Tb. This would also appeal to the current trend for low-profile and “all-in-one” desktops having the same storage as what was acceptable for larger designs.

For the home or small-business network, I would see possibilities like NAS units being in the order of at least 10Tb. This is in conjunction with PVRs and similar home-entertainment equipment able to work with many hours of ultra-high-definition video material especially as the 4K and 8K ultra-high-definition video technologies which yield cinema-quality video come closer.

Personally, I would expect this technology to materialise in the form of hard disks within the next two years once TDK have got it proven in a form for manufacturers to use. It also happens to be coinciding with the South-East-Asian hard-disk factories coming back on stream after the Thailand floods, this making it feasible to see the return of “dime-a-dozen” hard-disk storage.